Limiting Resources and Territoriality in Microtine Rodents

Ostfeld, Richard S.

doi:10.1086/284391

Cited by 402 publications

(335 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…As densities increased, intruder pressure forced females into smaller space and the space occupied was not related to food abundance. Instead, our results suggest that scattered food is not a defensible resource for gray-tailed voles, nor probably for microtine rodents in general (Ostfeld 1985, Wolff 1993). We do not have a direct measure of infanticide, but the observation that juvenile recruitment, but not pregnancy rate, correlated inversely with density of unrelated females, but not males or perhaps related adult females suggests that reduced recruitment was associated with pup mortality and not overall reproductive condition of females.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

“…Food is presumed to be a limiting resource for reproduction in female microtine rodents because of the animals' herbivorous diet, small size, and high energetic and nutritional demands for reproduction (Ostfeld 1985). If the function of territoriality among female rodents is to secure food that is both limited and necessary to successfully rear young, then manipulating the abundance of food should have predictable effects on the area that females occupy exclusively.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That resource for which females compete usually is considered to be food (Emlen and Oring 1977, Ostfeld 1985. Wolff (1993) recently challenged the food-defense hypothesis for female territoriality and proposed that female mammals defend territories to protect their pups from infanticide by conspecific females.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Space use and juvenile recruitment in gray-tailed volves in response to intruder pressure and food abundance

Wolff

Schauber²

1996

Acta Theriol.

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Wolff J. O. and Schauber E. M. 1996. Space use and juvenile recruitment in gray-tailed voles in response to intruder pressure and food abundance. Acta Theriologica 41: 35-43.We examined space use by female gray-tailed voles Microtus canicaudus (Miller, 1897) and recruitment of juveniles in response to relative abundance of food and increased intruder pressure following experimental removal of habitat. Our experiment indirectly tested the assumptions of the food-defense and pup-defense hypotheses for female territoriality. Following a 70% reduction in habitat, territories of females shrunk from -50 m to < 20 m with no significant difference in pregnancy rates or overall juvenile recruitment compared to controls. Juvenile recruitment was not adversely affected by overall density or the numbers of males sharing a patch, but decreased significantly as the number of unrelated adult females sharing a patch increased. We did not measure infanticide directly, but the decreased rate of juvenile recruitment in the presence of adult females but not males suggests that pup mortality rather than food limitation contributed to reduced juvenile recruitment. We conclude that at high densities, increased intruder pressure from adult females had a greater impact on juvenile recruitment than did food abundance. Thus, our results suggest that patterns of space use, reproductive rates, and juvenile recruitment were more consistent with the pup-defense than the food-defense hypothesis for female territoriality.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 53%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Space use and juvenile recruitment in gray-tailed volves in response to intruder pressure and food abundance

Wolff

Schauber²

1996

Acta Theriol.

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“…Thus, our results further stress the importance of the presence of cover to small mammals (e.g. Birney et al 1976, Hansson 1977, Hansson 1982, Ostfeld 1985, Pusenius & Viitala 1993. These findings strongly suggest that the majority of small mammals that continue to use a patch after grass cutting would no longer do so if all remaining cover (i.e.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 79%

Should We Stay or Should We Go Now? What Happens to Small Mammals When Grass is Mown, and the Implications for Birds of Prey

Garratt

Minderman

Whittingham

2012

Annales Zoologici Fennici

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With some raptors showing widespread declines, management of grassland to enhance access to their small mammal prey may be an important conservation tool. Many small mammal species prefer long grass as a habitat that offers protection from predation, and past studies on the consequences of grass cutting to small mammals have yielded mixed results. Using live trapping, we show that although mowing grass causes a rapid decline in small mammal captures, a small proportion of captures (20%-27%) still occurred in patches of mown grass immediately after cutting. This proportion more than halved again when the cut grass that was initially left in situ was removed. We conclude that some small mammals may remain in mown areas provided some form of cover -i.e. the cut grass -is present. These findings are discussed in light of agrienvironment scheme options (e.g. grass margins) that could be improved to benefit birds of prey.

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“…Previous studies show that factors relating to habitat are mainly vegetative cover and food supply; the same plants that provide food for the voles often also supply them with cover, so it is difficult to separate the effects of these two factors (Ostfeld 1985). Soil density might influence burrow systems of Microtus arvalis and other species.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The burrow system of the common vole (M. arvalis, Rodentia) in Switzerland

Brügger¹,

Nentwig²,

Airoldi³

2010

Mamm

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Fifty burrow systems of Microtus arvalis were excavated, from October 2006 to August 2007 in wildflower fields and quasi-natural habitats in five areas near Bern, Switzerland. They comprise an aboveground part, which is longer in spring/summer, and a subterranean part, which is longer in autumn/winter. Three main construction types exist: (a) linear burrows, (b) compact and tight networks, and (c) structures containing both a compact network around the nest and linear parts elsewhere. The subterranean length was on average 16.9 m (range: 0.5-70.2 m) and aboveground length 39.4 m (range: 0-95 m). Numbers of intersections, dead ends, and openings correlate significantly with subterranean burrow length. Nests and food caches were located at a maximal depth and mostly in a central position, as revealed by graph theory.

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Limiting Resources and Territoriality in Microtine Rodents

Cited by 402 publications

References 66 publications

Space use and juvenile recruitment in gray-tailed volves in response to intruder pressure and food abundance

Space use and juvenile recruitment in gray-tailed volves in response to intruder pressure and food abundance

Should We Stay or Should We Go Now? What Happens to Small Mammals When Grass is Mown, and the Implications for Birds of Prey

The burrow system of the common vole (M. arvalis, Rodentia) in Switzerland

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